Armenians look to Bush to step up pressure on Turkey over 1915 'genocide'

International pressure on Turkey to recognise the 1915 massacre of more than one million Armenians as genocide is mounting on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the start of the killings.

As Armenians worldwide prepare to commemorate the murders tomorrow - amid hopes that the US president, George Bush, will use the term genocide for the first time to describe the massacres - Ankara faced growing calls to own up to the slaughter.

Armenia's foreign minister, Vardan Oskanyan, said, "Without recognition of the fact of genocide and an admission that it was wrong, we cannot trust our neighbour, which has a tangible military weight."

Up to 1.5m Armenians may have died as part of a plot hatched by Ottoman Turks to ethnically cleanse the region during the first world war.

Turkish officials deny the allegations. Although they admit several hundred thousand people died, they claim that most deaths were as a result of hunger and disease when they were deported to Syria.

An American diplomat at the time reported seeing Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish tribesmen "sweeping the countryside, massacring men, women and children and burning their homes. Babies were shot in their mothers' arms, small children were horribly mutilated, women were stripped and beaten."

The calls on Ankara to face up to its past have cast a shadow over the country's efforts to join the EU. Increasing numbers of European politicians are demanding that Turkey accept that almost its entire Christian Armenian community died.

Speculation has been rife in the Turkish press that Mr Bush will tomorrow cave in to pressure from US Armenian groups and endorse the description of genocide in his annual statement condemning the massacres. Yesterday, President Jacques Chirac laid a wreath at a monument in Paris built to commemorate the victims.

Analysts say the issue has played a major role in the waning of popular support for EU membership among Turks. Last month more than 80% of Turks canvassed for a poll published in Turkey's Milliyet newspaper said Ankara should not seek EU membership if it has to recognise the genocide claims.

The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently urged a commission of historians to be formed to establish whether genocide occurred.

"It is wrong and unjust for our European friends to press Turkey on these issues," said President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. "These claims upset and hurt the feelings of the Turkish nation. What needs to be done is research and investigate and discuss history, based on documents and without prejudice."

Turkey's increasingly vocal nationalists counter that Europeans deliberately support Armenians, Kurds and other minorities with a view to ultimately dismembering Turkey.

The novelist Orhan Pamuk received death threats this year after he declared that "one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey".

"The Armenian issue is a black spot on our subconscious," said Dogu Ergil, a political sociologist at Ankara University. "This is a poisonous issue which will sour public opinion in Turkey and interfere with the enthusiasm of people here to be a part of Europe."